Word.ws English Dictionary

Canadian raising

Canadian raising noun: the phenomenon in some dialects of English, especially Canadian English, in which /aɪ/ is realized as [ʌɪ] and/or /aʊ/ is realized as [ʌʊ] or [ɛʊ] before underlying unvoiced consonants.

Noun

Canadian raising (countable and uncountable, plural Canadian raisings)

  1. The phenomenon in some dialects of English, especially Canadian English, in which /aɪ/ is realized as [ʌɪ] and/or /aʊ/ is realized as [ʌʊ] or [ɛʊ] before underlying unvoiced consonants.
  2. A similar but more restricted phenomenon, found in most dialects of American English, that applies only to /aɪ/, which is realized as [ʌɪ] in certain contexts, especially before underlying unvoiced consonants but with significant speaker-to-speaker variation.

Forms of Canadian raising

pluralCanadian raisings

Questions about Canadian raising

What does Canadian raising mean?
Canadian raising means the phenomenon in some dialects of English, especially Canadian English, in which /aɪ/ is realized as [ʌɪ] and/or /aʊ/ is realized as [ʌʊ] or [ɛʊ] before underlying unvoiced consonants.
What part of speech is Canadian raising?
Canadian raising is a noun.
What is the plural of Canadian raising?
The plural of Canadian raising is Canadian raisings.

Words near Canadian raising in the dictionary

  1. Canadian plum
  2. Canadian poplar
  3. Canadian porcupine
  4. Canadian porcupines
  5. Canadian Prairies
  6. Canadian raising
  7. Canadian raisings
  8. Canadian red pine
  9. Canadian red pines
  10. Canadian Rockies
  11. Canadian Shield

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Canadian raising (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Canadian raising.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/canadian_raising. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.